Saturday, September 11, 2010

Strange Waters

Artist "Mirabella Took" brings us this cunningly crafted brass and copper navigational device. I can't bring myself to call it by it's official name, a "Steampunk Pirate Pocketwatch", since it's so far beyond the typical brass candlesticks and watch gears junk foisted off by most steampunk artisans. Rant aside, this would make a fantastic arcane device.

Some things you call "retro-tech" or "retro-futuristic" or "mad science"... but others are left unlabeled... and there's no unifying tag for search use -- save "Physical Props" (which covers non-steamy props too, so people looking for "pieces like this one" might not find the other sculpted brass gadgets, or the Tom Banwell helmets, before they give up wading among all the unrelated props).

As a result, the entire aesthetic they have in common, and which the artists themselves (as in this case) even identify as their inspiration, goes entirely unnamed.

That doesn't seem quite right either, does it?

Since you don't feature poorly-crafted items here, surely there's no issue of lumping the good and bad together.

But for clarity's sake, would a tag like "Steampunk-not-junk" express the desired meaning?

"Physical Props" is a catchall that I rely on far too much (not to mention being redundant), but there's so much stuff that's just unclassifiable. I'm probably overdue for another sweep narrowing things down a bit.

Though any easily understood name could have served as a tag -- "Age of Brass and Steel" (or "Brass Age" for short), "Neo-Victorian Tech", etc. -- if there's one term you prefer to cover the whole category.

The "Physical Props" tag isn't redundant at all, because "Paper Props" and "Postal Props" and "Prop Documents" and "Prop Photographs" exist as other categories.

But, *ahem*, it might seem that "Physical Props" risks becoming the catch-all, when even the recent pharmacy labels PDF got that tag.

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Propnomicon focuses on horror and fantasy props of interest to fans of H. P. Lovecraft and players of the "Call of Cthulhu" role playing game. That includes items directly inspired by Lovecraft's writing, DIY information for creating your own works, printable paper props, and source materials related to the 1920's and 30's, the "classic era" of the Cthulhu Mythos. Beyond that, the proprietor of the blog also enjoys pulp action stories, classic supernatural horror, mad science, and the occasional foray into more modern interpretations of the Mythos.

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